Mjunction Appointed To Build A Platform For E-bidding, E-Evaluation Of Bids And E-allocation Of Oil & Gas Fields

mjunction services limited, one of the country’s largest e-commerce companies and a 50:50 joint venture between Steel Authority of India Ltd and Tata Steel, has been appointed by the Directorate General of Hydrocarbons (DGH) to build a platform for e-bidding, e-evaluation of bids, and e-allocation of oil and gas fields. This will enable transparent allocation of natural resources, and help reduce the country’s oil import bill by $8 billion annually, a statement issued by mjunction on Monday said.

Commenting on the development, mjunction CEO Vinaya Varma said: “I am happy we have been entrusted with the responsibility of building this platform, in addition to managing e-auction of spectrum for the Government of India. We have built up strong competencies in design and conduct of large value e-auctions, and I want to thank DGH for this nationally important contract.”

DGH is the nodal agency under the ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas for allocation of oil and gas fields to interested bidders for exploration and production activities.

Mr Varma said that mjunction will customise its e-bidding software to provide facilities to electronically receive and evaluate bids and to automatically allocate oil and gas fields under the Hydrocarbon Exploration and Licensing Policy (HELP) framework, which was introduced in 2015. HELP replaced the 18-year-old New Exploration Licensing Policy (NELP), and is expected to remove its various limitations which led to inefficiencies in exploiting natural resources.